The Korai of Ionia were statues depicting female figures ( korai ), or Caryatids, and belonged to the collection of Ionian treasuries of the Oracle of Delphi. Already from the middle of the 6th century BC begins the construction of the first Ionic temples with statues of elegant girls on their façades which radiate a feeling of the East, brought from the coast of Asia Minor. The beautiful kore, who raises with her left hand the sheer, long and pleated chiton (tunic) and dates back, as the oldest one, to around 550 B.C. is attributed - with some doubt, however - to the Treasure of Knidos in Asia Minor.
Kore is the modern term given to a type of free-standing ancient Greek sculpture of the Archaic period depicting female figures, always of a young age. Kouroi are the youthful male equivalent of kore statues.
Chitons are marine molluscs of varying size in the class Polyplacophora, formerly known as Amphineura. About 940 extant and 430 fossil species are recognized.
Knidos or Cnidus was an ancient Greek city of Caria and part of the Dorian Hexapolis, in south-western Asia Minor, modern-day Turkey. It was situated on the Datça peninsula, which forms the southern side of the Sinus Ceramicus, now known as Gulf of Gökova. By the 4th century BC, Knidos was located at the site of modern Tekir, opposite Triopion Island. But earlier, it was probably at the site of modern Datça.
Another kore/Caryatid stands out for its solid smirk on her face and the beautiful almond-shaped eyes. She comes from the façade of an Ionian Treasury that remains unidentified and seems to have been built around 530 B.C. [1]
The details that give a sense of motion/vitality to the kore are very characteristic. Their hair are carved with patience and bear numerous holes, which served to secure the jewelry with which they were decorated. In fact, they were also decorated with added marble curls. Their chiton was rich in pleats which gave a strong sense of life and motion to the statues. All of these features are thus evidence that testify to the wealth of decorative arts and the mastery of the craftsmen of the era. [2] [3]
Eleusis is a town and municipality in West Attica, Greece. It is situated about 18 kilometres northwest from the centre of Athens. It is located in the Thriasian Plain, at the northernmost end of the Saronic Gulf. North of Eleusis are Mandra and Magoula, while Aspropyrgos is to the northeast.
A caryatid is a sculpted female figure serving as an architectural support taking the place of a column or a pillar supporting an entablature on her head. The Greek term karyatides literally means "maidens of Karyai", an ancient town of Peloponnese. Karyai had a temple dedicated to the goddess Artemis in her aspect of Artemis Karyatis: "As Karyatis she rejoiced in the dances of the nut-tree village of Karyai, those Karyatides, who in their ecstatic round-dance carried on their heads baskets of live reeds, as if they were dancing plants".
A peplos is a body-length garment established as typical attire for women in ancient Greece by 500 BC. It was a long, tubular cloth with the top edge folded down about halfway, so that what was the top of the tube was now draped below the waist, and the bottom of the tube was at the ankle. The garment was then gathered about the waist and the folded top edge pinned over the shoulders. The folded-down top of the tube provided the appearance of a second piece of clothing.
Cappadocian, also known as Cappadocian Greek or Asia Minor Greek, is a mixed language spoken in Cappadocia. The language originally diverged from the Medieval Greek of the Byzantine Empire following the Seljuq Turk victory at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071. As a result of the population exchange between Greece and Turkey in the 1920s, all Cappadocian Greeks were forced to emigrate to Greece where they were resettled in various locations, primarily to Central and Northern Greece. The Cappadocians rapidly shifted to Standard Modern Greek and their language was thought to be extinct since the 1960s. In June 2005, Mark Janse and Dimitris Papazachariou discovered Cappadocians in Central and Northern Greece who could still speak their ancestral language fluently. Many are middle-aged, third-generation speakers who take a very positive attitude towards the language, as opposed to their parents and grandparents. The latter are much less inclined to speak Cappadocian and more often than not switch to Standard Modern Greek.
The Siphnian Treasury was a building at the Ancient Greek cult centre of Delphi, erected to host the offerings of the polis, or city-state, of Siphnos. It was one of a number of treasuries lining the "Sacred Way", the processional route through the Sanctuary of Apollo, erected to win the favor of the gods and increase the prestige of the donor polis. It was one of the earlier surviving buildings of this type, and its date remains a matter for debate, with the most plausible date being around 525 BC. Until recently it was often confused or conflated with the neighbouring Cnidian Treasury, a similar but less elaborate building, as the remains of the two had become mixed together and earlier theoretical reconstructions used parts of both.
Delphi Archaeological museum is one of the principal museums of Greece and one of the most visited. It is operated by the Greek Ministry of Culture. Founded in 1903, it has been rearranged several times and houses the discoveries made at the panhellenic sanctuary of Delphi, which date from the Late Helladic (Mycenean) period to the early Byzantine era.
Clothing in ancient Greece primarily consisted of the chiton, peplos, himation, and chlamys. Ancient Greek men and women typically wore two pieces of clothing draped about the body: an undergarment and a cloak. Ancient Greek clothing was mainly based on necessity, function, materials, and protection rather than identity. Thus, clothes were quite simple, draped, loose-fitting and free flowing. Customarily, clothing was homemade and cut to various lengths of rectangular linen or wool fabric with minimal cutting or sewing, and secured with ornamental clasps or pins, and a belt, or girdle (zone). Pieces were generally interchangeable between men and women. However, women usually wore their robes to their ankles while men generally wore theirs to their knees depending on the occasion and circumstance.
The Phrasikleia Kore is an Archaic Greek funerary statue by the artist Aristion of Paros, created between 550 and 530 BCE. It was found carefully buried in the ancient city of Myrrhinous in Attica and excavated in 1972. The exceptional preservation of the statue and the intact nature of the polychromy elements makes the Phrasikleia Kore one of the most important works of Archaic art.
The Diana of Gabii is a statue of a woman in drapery which probably represents the goddess Artemis and is traditionally attributed to the sculptor Praxiteles. It became part of the Borghese collection and is now conserved in the Louvre with the inventory number Ma 529.
The Peplos Kore is a statue of a girl and one of the most well-known examples of Archaic Greek art. The 118 cm-high (46 in) high white marble statue was made around 530 BC and originally was colourfully painted. The statue was found, in three pieces, in an 1886 excavation north-west of the Erechtheion on the Athenian Acropolis and is now in the Acropolis Museum in Athens.
The Antenor Kore is a Late Archaic statue of a girl (Kore) made of Parian marble, which was created around 530/20 BC.
The Korai of the Acropolis of Athens are a group of female statues (Korai), discovered in the Perserschutt of the Acropolis of Athens in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, all of the same typology and clear votive function. Through them it is possible to trace the stylistic evolution of Archaic Attic sculpture for almost a century, from 570 to 480 BC. This demonstrates in particular the beginning and development of Ionian influence on Athenian art of the second half of the 6th century BC. This was the period when Ionian elements first appear in the architectural works of the Peisistratids and close connections between Ionia and Athens developed. Towards the end of the 6th century BC this influence is seen to be overcome, or rather absorbed, and a new style is born, the so-called severe style, with increasing Peloponnesian influence.
The Kore of Lyons is a Greek statue of Pentelic marble depicting a bust of a young girl of the kore type, conserved at the musée des beaux-arts de Lyon, France. Deriving from the Athenian Acropolis, it is generally dated to the 540s BC. Considered the centrepiece of the museum's antiquities department, the statue was acquired between 1808 and 1810.
The Omphalos of Delphi is an ancient marble monument that was found at the archaeological site of Delphi, Greece.
The silver bull of Delphi is the first large-scale statue made all from forged metal – a bull made of sheets of silver. The sixty silver leaves that were found crumbled and damaged in a depository of the Delphic Sanctuary, after long and detailed conservation work, managed to revive, even if only in our imagination, the silver bull statue. The shape of the statue was created by a wooden core, which was filled with some malleable material: clay, wax or plaster. The silver leaves were applied on top of it and were secured with nails. The details of the bull were gold-plated.
The Tholos of Delphi is among the ancient structures of the Sanctuary of Athena Pronaia in Delphi. The circular temple, a "Tholos", shares an immediate site with other ancient foundations of the Temple of Athena Pronaia, all located less than a mile east of the main ruins at Delphi, in the modern Greek regional unit of Phocis. The tholos is part of the Delphi UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Cnidus was represented at the sanctuary of Apollo by a treasury of the late Archaic period and by a late Classical period building, called "Lesche", a kind of club for social gatherings.
The treasury of the Massaliots was situated in the Sanctuary of Athena Pronaea. It looked like a small temple in antis with two columns on the façade; it was constructed of Paros marble and among its remarkable features were its "Aeolian" capitals.
The Iron Age Greek migrations were effected by a population of émigrés from amidst the displacements and reconstruction that occurred in Greece proper from the middle of the 11th century to end of the 9th century BCE. These movements resulted in the settlement of the Aegean islands, Cyprus, Crete and the western coast of Asia Minor and the founding of new cities which afterwards became centers of the Greek civilization. The migrations were effected in consecutive waves by tribal groupings known as the Aeolic, Ionian, Doric and Achaean (Arcadian) migrations. These movements differed from the Greek colonisation of the Archaic period in that they were more ad hoc affairs instead of the result of a planned process of colonisation on the part of the mother city, and they are less well-documented historically, often with a mythologized or semi-legendary leader such as Hercules or Orestes being recorded as the leader of the colonists.